‘There’s only one fucking domino, you bastards!’
He took off.
Play to win
Sunday morning was a breakfast of doom. His mother was highly ashamed. She wouldn’t speak to him. His sister was ordered from the room. His brothers giggled from the stairs. His father was mood-swinging between glaring silences and ranting apoplexy.
‘What was the meaning of it? What was he thinking of? Why? You tell me why! And naked, but I wouldn’t mind! What must the neighbours, the nice neighbours be thinking, I cannot be thinking. Never in England should this be happening!’
And then the silence and the glares.
Jazir was OK, a little bruised. He’d landed half on the dustbin, which had fallen over and activated the neighbours’ security lighting. Really, he should’ve been more badly hurt. Just for one second he really had flown, he was sure of it! How else to explain his lack of injury?
The son could say none of this to his father. His father had hit him. The first time in a long time, and the last ever. His father knew this. He knew his son was lost. The father could say none of this to his son.
Jazir escaped by pledging himself to hard, hard work and lots of it, both in the restaurant and in his lessons.
One hour later found him limping slightly down Alma Street. No signs of life, but that was good, that was normal for the area. He actually knocked on the door of No. 27 for some reason, maybe so as not to scare Daisy. He was so excited at what he had to tell her. He got no answer anyway, so he pushed the door open and went on through. No Daisy. He called out her name. Went upstairs, looked in every room.
Emptiness. The camping stove knocked over, soup spilled on the floor.
Some unfinished equations on a scrap of paper.
A shadow’s breath.
Play to win
James Love (Five-Four) got the call on Sunday morning, rousing him from a drunken sleep. He was expecting it to be Daisy, just because there was nobody else. He couldn’t quite remember if he’d been harsh on her yesterday. Maybe she was ready for the next game now, the next lesson. He certainly didn’t expect the cold voice that cut short his greetings. ‘Mr Love?’
‘Last time I looked.’
‘You may wish to be less jocular.’
‘You what? Who is this?’
‘The police. We have your daughter.’
‘Daisy? What—’
‘She has asked that you visit her. Manchester Central. Thank you.’
‘What’s happened?’
An empty phone.
The long bus journey was hard for him; not having been to the city for so many years, not since – well, not since the old days – he was scared at what he would find. His tiny life kind of suited him; soon he could retire, and spend his final days doing more or less what he’d done for the last twenty years, the wasting of his life. He liked wasting his life; he was an expert at it.
Manchester, thankfully, was the same as when he had left it in the Seventies, only more so: dim, grim, grimy, grubby, grey. Someone had stuck a patina of flash over the top of it all, in the modern style. He was still drunk, of course, but even the police station looked the same. He’d been arrested in the early Seventies; some protest march had gone wrong. He’d spent a night in the cells. One new thing from those days was the giant scarlet W that floated above the entrance. Someone had thrown a stone against it, making a ragged, pleasing hole. Good shot. Thank God it was a Sunday. No crowds, just the detritus of Saturday night, his daughter included…
Some buffoon called Crawl seemed to be in charge, but he wouldn’t give out details of the case.
‘Is my daughter under arrest?’
‘Have you been drinking, Mr Love? I trust you didn’t drive here.’
‘I did actually. Was that your parking space?’
‘You’ve got fifteen minutes.’
Crawl watched the whole thing on the video system. He’d seen some hardnut bastards do some funny things in cells before, but playing dominoes? That was a first. The filthy drunk tumbling the bones onto the table. The following conversation was recorded:
‘What’s going on?’ asked the father.
‘I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything,’ replied the daughter.
‘You must’ve done something.’
‘I broke into the town hall.’
‘The town hall! Good on yer, girl!’
‘Just the Room of Holes, that’s all. We wanted to find out—’
‘We? Who’s we?’
‘Erm… a friend of mine.’
‘I see.’
‘Can you get me out of here?’
‘You should’ve called a lawyer.’
‘I don’t need a lawyer. I haven’t done anything wrong. Well, not seriously wrong. We just needed some details. Locations of a beggar. That’s all.’